Quantcast

[Image] Tomiyasu to start? – How Arsenal should line-up vs Man Utd

By on April 22, 2022

Mikel Arteta Arsenal

Arsenal can move back into the top four with a win over Manchester United at the Emirates tomorrow. This is the line-up I’d like to see Mikel Arteta select for the match…

The boss must have read my article ahead of the Chelsea game as he went with my suggestion of bringing Rob Holding in alongside Gabriel and moving Ben White to right-back. This balanced the defence much more and Nuno Tavares put in another solid display at left-back as a result.

Takehiro Tomiyasu is set to return to the Arsenal squad after resuming full training. However, he’s been out for almost three months with calf issues so it would be a HUGE risk to throw him in from the start against Man Utd. We should ease him back with a substitute appearance tomorrow and stick with the same back four that featured against Chelsea.

One thing I didn’t see is Mohamed Elneny being handed a rare start in midfield on Wednesday night. After a rusty start, the Egyptian settled into things and actually had a decent game in the end. With Bruno Fernandes being one of Man Utd’s biggest dangers, we should stick with Elneny so he can do a job on the Portuguese international.

Obviously Granit Xhaka and Martin Odegaard will keep their places in the Arsenal starting eleven while Bukayo Saka should keep his place after an excellent performance at Stamford Bridge.

Eddie Nketiah showed how important it is to have a goal poacher in the team with two well taken goals on Wednesday. I think it’s fair to say Alexandre Lacazette wouldn’t have scored either of those opportunities.

His all-round game and link-up play may not be as good as Laca’s, but Nketiah is a goal threat and he deserves to keep his place up front against Man Utd tomorrow.

That leaves one spot up for grabs and Emile Smith Rowe will hope to keep his place after scoring a terrific goal in midweek. However, there is very little turn around time for this game so I’d freshen things up by bringing Gabriel Martinelli into the side.

Here is the team I hope we see:

football formations